There is number of things wrong with cloning. It could be used for:1. Replacing people, like the president, ok, bad example.2. Duplicating a single person many times, depletion of the gene pool.3. Creating slavery.4. Inadvertently creating a competing species.5. Creating a freak zoo (Alien Resurrection).

IMO it depends on a couple of factors.1) What is the clone going to be used for.2) How safe is it for the clones well being to be created.

That first factor is pretty obvious, a clone army or eugenics program so on & so forth tends to be a no no.

The second factor is actually the more important factor in today's science. The reason is human cloning (even animal cloning) is not well understood, genetic defects could easily cause problems including advanced aging. The other problem is the success rate for mammal clones is actually quite low, the last I checked except in rats the success rate is less than 5%, that means 95% of embryos & fetuses created die before implantation or birth.

I do believe eventually the world will get over the whole "affront to the dignity of humanity" line and human cloning will be an everyday event like test tube babies.

Well, what is it that makes us, us? Our genes. If we go monkeying with that then we won't be us anymore. The "affront to our dignity" thing is a real issue. But since dignity and respect for human beings as a concept is being destroyed worldwide you are right to expect the outcome you listed.Making some organs to transplant is great but you know it won't end there.

Oh I'm of the opinion that cloning will lead to trying to create a "perfect human" not in the sense of "Master race" but along the lines of eliminating every mutant or faulty gene that causes illness or disease in the clones.

Personally I'm not against that, a new humanity that has dominant genes that prevent inherited diseases would probably be a plus.

The thing gets messy when we start talking about the duplications of sequences that currently exist in our genome that causes problems. If the backups are eliminated and we drop from 20000 some genes down to 10000 some genes have we in effect become Rossums Universal Robots.

"Ah now, young Rossum; that was the start of a new age. After the age of research came the age of production. He took a good look at the human body and he saw straight away that it was much too complicated, any good engineer would design it much more simply. So he began to re-design the whole anatomy, seeing what he could leave out or simplify. "http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/capek/karel/rur/

While all that is a matter of if and what the real problem is legal issues not scientific or moral ones. Already we have companies copywriting patenting and trademarking genes, imagine what happens when a Monsanto type owns most of the cloning tech. I don't worry about a world full of clones, clones aren't their templates, they are born just like everybody else and have tolearn just like everybody else. A clone teenager will have the same perks and flaws of a real one because s/he is one. The obvious reason for cloning will be some rich big wig who has no legal heirs to have one to inherit the fortune when s/he dies. The biggest reason will be cloned bodyparts, but hopefully not a whole body to harvest parts from.

To me cloning is more of a fearmongering issue than a real issue. as I said the success rate is terrible, so its a long way off at best before it becomes a real issue.

Extrabody organ parts for those in needGood for endangered speciesFood supply would last longer

Against Cloning:

Those with money will use it for evilCloning anyone will result in greed for powerCloning ability decreases each time you clone yourselfFreak experiments will be conducted with no doubt (already has been done in my opinion)...

Not sure about this xerox of xerox line "Cloning ability decreases each time you clone yourself" Protein sequences are data, if you know the sequence and can manipulate the protein sequence the data can be replicated without distortion. We haven't got that far yet, but I'd think before anything goes on a production line we will. Furthermore as long as the original DNA exists there are billions of cells to use thus billions of potential clones.

See the real problem is not the clones, this fear of clones not being real people is hogwash every identically born baby is technically a clone, twins are people. What we do know is that social imprinting has more to do with how people turn out than the genetic predispositions we find in twins (example similar tastes in foods). All cloning actually does is replicate the DNA nothing else. So the real problem is the current people how they would treat cloned people, would we start talking nonsense and treat them as second class citizens because of how they were concieved? I think not, but the anti-cloning crowd is inherently bigotted towards people who would be born in this manner. Clones will start off as babies and gfgrow up just like any other child we can only expect them to behave as all the other kids with the same faults and blessings.

With the way we humans behave robotically raised clones may be the only thing that saves our species from extinction in the end.

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